I’m having problems with the game Faxanadu in the Nestopia core. The game will freeze at various points, always shortly after starting. I tried two different roms that I had… same with both. Anyone know if this is a known core issue, or do I maybe have bad roms? Thanks for the help.
To know if your rom is a bad one or not, you could check the No-Intro database. For instance, here’s Faxanadu: https://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=show_record&s=45&n=0739
Just compare the checksums to the roms you have. If everything seems good, it’s probably an issue with the Nestopia core, which would be better reported in the proper repository. Meanwhile, you could also try the FCEUmm and Mesen cores, they are pretty good.
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Thanks… yeah, it works in Mesen, I just found out so it must be Nestopia. I was having some other problems with Mesen so I switched. Everything was good with Nestopia up until this game. I’ll see if I can find their github or whatever.
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You can report Nestopia core issues here: https://github.com/libretro/nestopia/issues Regarding NES, I mostly use FCEUmm, as it’s light, has many features and good accuracy for officially released games. You could try it sometime.
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Yeah, I used to use the FCEU a long time ago as a standalone, I think. So, I will probably get it back in the rotation. I see it has a lot of color palettes and options.
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@Drybonz what version of the game do you have? (ntsc, pal) What platform are you using? Do you have any weird options enabled? (run ahead, frame skip, etc.) I use and recommend Nestopia, in my opinion it works much better than Fceum, on which games can not start at all, or have graphical errors.
I checked Faxanadu US version and I do not see any problems on Windows 11. Also make sure you have default Nestopia core settings.
I opened a ticket on github, and the guy that does the libretro port, carmiker, was really nice and helpful. Turns out it was because of the overclock feature which I had turned on at some point and forgot about it. He said it was better not to use it at all. Anyway, thanks for the replies and case closed.
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ROM testing aside, now is as good a time as any to switch from Nestopia to Mesen.
I don’t know if this has been addressed by now but I was able to get an entire frame of lag less when using Run-Ahead/Pre-emptive Frames in Mesen vs Nestopia.
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Mesen was my go-to for a long time… started having some issue and I honestly can’t even remember what it was… but I have already fired it up again. I need to mess with the run-ahead feature because I see people talking about it and I don’t know what it does exactly.
Wow! Well it’s the best thing you never knew you needed. That, Frame Delay and reducing the Max Swap Chain Frames and Audio Latency to the lowest your system will tolerate goes a long way to making games feel much tighter and more responsive by reducing input lag.
If you’re playing on a flat panel display, also naked sure that you’re using Game mode.
I just turned it on with pre-emptive frames, then loaded up some Super Mario and it was in hyper-speed. Do I need to cap the frames somehow?
Run Ahead/Pre-emptive frames is not something you just “turn-on”. There’s a method to setting it up. Don’t forget to also turn on Frame Delay (Auto) once you’re not using any type of VRR/G-Sync/Free-Sync.
https://docs.libretro.com/guides/runahead/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDYqRoyOKI4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsU7zQw3VKI
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Ok… thanks. I have this set up now. Did some testing today and it seems pretty good. I don’t know if it’s night and day, but these settings are smoother than I had them before. Thanks for the help.
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